A Double-Triple-Dipped Toothbrush and Innocent Gum Wrappers Gone Guilty

You are now a party to my wacked responses to a fun meme tag. My poorly thought out ploy was to hook you via the above scurrilous, confessional-style details, then get all insane in the meme brain on ya! Shee-aw-right. Um, are you still here or have you already ditched my meme-spewing blog for some other blogging slackstress? If not hang in there, I get weirder.

At Your Cervix (brilliant screen name for a labor and delivery nurse, as I've said in previous posts) recently tagged me with a fun "Six Weird Things" meme. Like I said earlier, it'll be a challenge to limit myself to only six weird things/bizarre quirks/unique idiosyncrasies about myself since I'm such a freak anyhow.

Back to WTAM No. 2: I gave birth to two of my children at home in bed. My family and friends are probably so sick of me shamelessly talking (bragging) about this that they could probably puke, like I did after gorging myself on a post-first-homebirth victory feast (I say victory because I didn't perish in my bed and that the baby came out alive and healthy without medical professionals immediately within reach, within miles, actually) of double creme Brie on fresh demi-baguette topped with Italian salami slices, chased by healthy gulps of cranberry juice on the rocks. The only reason I bring this up here as a WTAM is that the very act of birthing any where but in a hospital is still very weird to Americans today. Whenever people ask me where my two youngest (Cheeks, 3, and Pigtail Sprite, 2,) were born I feel compelled to tell them they were born at home on different floors in the same Southern California apartment building instead of simply rattling off the city in which they were born. I almost dying to talk about homebirth to get the word out that it's an option that's alive and well. When I tell people I've had two home births, their eyes practically bulge out of their sockets in sheer shock. "Wow. I didn't even know people even did that anymore!" is a typical response or "You're crazy! Why would you want to do THAT?!"

WTAM No. 3: I once found out the hard (unhygienic) way that several of my college apartment-mates were using MY toothbrush DAILY. Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia had just "cashed his chips in" (died). That's exactly how a scruffy, baseball capped San Francisco cabbie ever so casually broke the news to me. I'd just returned from the newly shrouded with grief Haight Ashbury district and the fall semester was beginning. I needed a place to stay and hooked up with half a dozen Dead Head hippie "hemp activists" who were looking for one more roommate. I think I responded to a fairly nondescript add. I had no idea what to expect. Let's just say that hygiene was not nearly as much of a priority for my roommates as getting Gene high, okay? (Get it? It's a play on high-gene/hygiene. You get the picture.) The guys had stinky dreadlocks. The girls had hairy pits. Furry legs. While I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that there's SOMETHING WRONG WITH NOT WASHING FOR DAYS AND SOMETIMES WEEKS AT A TIME, PEOPLE! So, short story way too long like so many rambling Phish songs blared throughout our neo-hippie college haven back in the day, I discovered that the "others," my hyrdoponics-curious apartment-folk were dipping my toothbrushes in lips that didn't reside on me when I kept noticing that the battered bristles on my Oral B (B for rude other people's bunk) were already wet when I picked it up. After wondering for weeks what was up, long enough to have replaced my toothbrush three times over, I blasted out of the bathroom like sweaty singer Meatloaf storming about in a bad rock ballad music video and demanded answers. "Um, yeah ... Dude. Yeah, well, uh ... We've been using your toothbrush for a while, right? Yeah. And it's sick, kid, cuz' I haven't brush my teeth since Jerry died, right? Duuuuude. Nasty. I guess I should say sorry." So went the confession of my roommate, who too many people nicknamed "Scumbard," a filthy play on his last name which I will not reveal since he did share food with me in my starving student days. Actually, he was a treat to be around. I lost touch with him after he took some acid and removed all the furniture from an empty house near our university before setting it on fire. He said, "A wolf told me to do it," when the police found him cowering at the top of a tree, apparently unable to come down from the tree and come down from his trip. Several weeks passed before he fully "came down." Several long, hard weeks in the closest city's psych ward. Considering the fact that "Scumbard" grew up on The Farm, a bona fide commune born out of the 60s, I felt I had to cut him a grip of slack. Even if he was one the of mustard-toothed culprits behind my used and abused toothbrush.

WTAM No. 4: I have NEVER skinny dipped and I grew up with an awesome in-ground pool. What the hell? How did I miss out on such a teenaged right of passage? Never having skinny dipped is the stuff of losers who never threw caution to the wind and got buck wild (and buck naked). Although, many times I hiked up my acid wash 80s skirt to climb over neighborhood condo villa fences to access the "for residents only" pool with friends. Now I fear I'll never skinny dip, not after having three babies and sprouting pin stripe stretch marks in all the places that count.

WTAM No. 5: I once hitch-hiked on a secluded New Hampshire old farm road in the dark. Stupid, I know. I also hitch hiked in the daylight, which was far more successful and involved far fewer tears. Funny thing is the mother of a high school friend of mine picked me up and chastised me the entire way for hitch hiking in the first place. "How could you be so stupid?" she yelled at me over and over again between long drags on her Virginia Slims sliver of a cancer stick. 'Just my luck that a mother I know from high school would pick my foolish 20-year-old student ass up an hour and half from my home town.

(Hey, I just thought of WTAM as an acronym for What Trash American Muff. I must be tired or dangerously over-caffeinated. I'm voting for the coffee-fueled option right after I get back from pouring another mug full.)

Finally, as previously shared in a "teaser" blog posting, I give you WTAM No. 6: Mystery powder dusted, scratchy Trident gum wrappers give me goosebumps all over. I have major OCD issues about gum wrappers. I can't even touch such nasty little scourges of the gum world. The minty-bunk-stink of Trident flavors of any kind repulse me. I'd rather change a blowout diaper than have to hold my child's empty, crumpled up Trident gum wrapper. Chalk, well, I hate the feel of chalk too. Rumor has it my father-in-law is repelled by the feel of peach fuzz on an actual peach. We're not talking five o'clock shadow here. We're talking fruit. I can SO relate.

I believe this WTAM meme's protocol is that I must list the directions and the fellow bloggers who I plan to "tag" via comments on their blogs. So, here goes with the directions:

"According to the rules, each player of this game starts with '6 Weird Things about You.' People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says 'you are tagged' in their comments and tell them to read your blog!"

No I give you those I plan to tag in the next two days or so:
WannabeHippie
WhiteTrashMom
HerBadMother
Mombat
MizBohemia'sRhapsody
bcmanning

Get to it, weirdos!